


The Sous Chef Job

by Akaihyou, dome_epais



Category: Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Disability, Gen, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 45-60 Minutes, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-07-10 13:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19906186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akaihyou/pseuds/Akaihyou, https://archiveofourown.org/users/dome_epais/pseuds/dome_epais
Summary: Bucky's in town to chop vegetables and fight injustice, and he may never run out of vegetables.





	The Sous Chef Job

**Author's Note:**

> Set between Black Panther and Infinity War in the MCU and at some point after the Leverage series ends.
> 
> Many thanks to L, my habitual beta and patient listener. - dome_epais

[Podfic without music in Google Drive Size 28.2MB Length 49:46](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1V-Ef7HSxF5atMoaXKM8H-cIFx_jkobcV)

[Podfic with music in Google Drive Size 28.8MB Length 50:44 ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wiHgL6D2XQ2pIKn_4qdCJZJafej68iMN/view?usp=sharing)

* * *

When Hardison went back and looked through the security tapes, he would see the one-armed guy arrive half an hour after the brewery opened for lunch. He carried a backpack and a thick briefcase over to the back corner booth before going to the bar with his hand free for a drink. He wrote for over an hour with a pen and paper, only pausing to order a fancy sandwich and one more beer. 

Then the guy pulled out his tablet and opened it with a retina scan. That’s when a lot of alarms went off in Hardison and Parker’s apartment.

Hardison barely had time to read the seven simultaneous security alerts before practically teleporting downstairs. He skidded into the kitchen’s hallway, badly startling Jenny as she prepped for the dinner rush.

“Whoa,” she scolded him, “where’s the fire?”

Eliot, playing sous chef, took one look at Hardison’s face and set his knife down. “Parker?”

Hardison was breathing too hard to speak. He shook his head, then widened his eyes and tried to mime _‘but something’s hinky!!!’_

“I’ll be right back, Jen,” Eliot excused himself, and took point going toward the brewery’s dining area. When he passed Hardison, he mimicked the flaily hands like Hardison was being ridiculous. 

They got into the dining room to find it only a quarter full. It was past the lunch rush and the remaining people were settling in for a couple of hours of wifi and beer. Which one of them was it?

“Hardison,” Eliot prompted, eyes scanning sharply.

“Someone’s on the network,” Hardison managed to whisper, catching his breath, “who should not be.” 

Eliot nodded once, turning his head, then hesitated. He jerked his chin toward the back table.

Hardison turned to see a typical Portland hipster. Next to a plate of crumbs and a glass of the stout on tap, a notebook of longhand writing lay open. The guy had his hair pulled back in a manbun and a full beard, along with a red flannel with one sleeve pinned up. But Hardison was looking at the tablet propped up on the table, an unidentifiable make and model.

Hardison nodded back at Eliot, confirming.

For a moment, Eliot’s eyes were intent and predatory, assessing the threat. With an effort, he shrugged into his customer service smile and approached the guy’s table with his shoulders hunched, nonaggressive. Hardison followed a few steps back, trying to act casual and ignore Parker’s voice in his head telling him to _stop overthinking what casual looks like_.

“Hey, man,” Eliot started, standing over the guy’s table.

“Hey,” the guy echoed, not looking up. At Hardison’s angle, he couldn’t see anything on the screen of the tablet; a pretty heavy privacy filter.

Eliot said, “Can we sit down for a second?”

Now the guy looked up and gave Eliot a once-over. His jaw clenched. “That depends on if you’re gonna start a fight.”

Eliot deliberately shifted his weight off the balls of his feet and said, “I’m the owner. We’re having… a little problem with our wifi.”

The guy looked at his tablet and frowned. “Oh. Uh. That might be me.”

“Might be?” Hardison asked.

The guy shrugged, lopsided. “Hell if I know. You’re the owner, huh?” he asked Eliot. “I’m looking for someone. Think you can help me out?”

“Maybe,” Eliot allowed.

“I’m looking for Eliot Spencer,” the guy said. “I have an in from Natalia Romanova.”

Hardison had only seen Eliot snap into high alert a few times; his head shot up and fists clenched so suddenly that it looked like he might have pulled something. The other guy reacted defensively, pressing his shoulders against the brick wall behind him, one boot coming up from the ground like he was going to kick Eliot with all his body mass.

They both froze, staring at each other. Hardison, pretty freaked out himself, listened to the quiet chatter of the normal pub customers completely ignoring their conversation.

“That would be me,” Eliot ground out, controlling himself after a few interminable seconds.

Still in the extreme corner, the guy said cautiously, “Then I guess you should sit down, after all.”

Eliot waved for Hardison to sit on the inside of the booth, then took the outside seat. 

The guy gradually unwound from his coil and cleared his throat. “Sorry about that. Let’s start over.” He offered his right hand with a truly bright, charming smile. “Nice to meet ya, I’m Bucky Barnes.”

So really, that’s just the start of their problems.

\--

“I think I’ve heard these names before,” Parker said, perched on the back of the couch and squinting up at the screen that dominated her and Hardison’s living room. “Have I heard these names before?”

“Parker, I’m like eighty percent certain that you’ve heard of Captain America before,” Eliot told her.

Parker tilted her head back and forth; _maybe_. “I’ve definitely heard of Romanova.”

Parker had gotten back from a visit with Nate and Sophie to the news that Eliot let an ex-supersoldier assassin sleep on his couch last night. Well, technically, he was just as ex-assassin; he still had superpowers. Just no left arm. 

Bucky was currently trying to help Eliot make stew by de-leafing some kind of ruffley lettuce, but it wasn’t going great one-handed; he had to lean his forearm down to hold it in place and also pull on the leaves.

Bucky snorted. “Everyone’s heard of Nat. For a secret spy operative, she has quite the reputation.”

“Spy stuff is whatever,” Parker dismissed, “but they say that she has the original ‘Moonlight Night on the Dnieper’, and the one hanging in St. Petersburg is fake.”

“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like her,” Bucky agreed.

Parker automatically looked around for Hardison to make him google a picture of the painting for her, but he had taken Bucky’s tablet into his cleanroom. Which was actually the guest room, but their only guests were deconstructed electronic parts. She pulled out her phone and started googling the ‘Dnieper’ herself. “How do you know about her?” she asked, distracted.

Eliot sighed. “She’s an Avenger. I _know_ that you’ve heard of the Avengers.”

“Sure I have,” Parker agreed, and smiled at Eliot like she was just agreeing to make him feel better. 

He could probably tell that she was teasing him, but he pouted on cue and grumbled a little as he chopped up squash. When he finished with one section, he hesitated and said, “Haven’t heard from Romanova in years, and back then...” 

Bucky glanced at Eliot and then at Parker, sensing the change in mood.

“Eliot?” Parker played along with Eliot’s tone, “How do you know her?” He appreciated it when they leaned into the dramatic former mercenary routine.

“Bogotá,” he gruffly admitted, “and at the time we weren’t on the same side of the fight.”

A pile of slightly-squished leaves landed on Eliot’s hands, distracting him. Bucky said, “That’s nothing. I shot her. Twice.” He crossed his arm over his chest, like it was a habit from having two, and leaned back on the counter like he was bragging. “We get along better now.”

From behind the closed door of the cleanroom, Hardison kind of yelped.

Bucky and Eliot both tensed up, but Eliot recognized it as excitement almost immediately. Bucky flinched again when Hardison burst out through the door and into the living room shouting, “It’s _vibranium-based_!”

Parker saw him coming for her with both arms open and hopped up to let him hug her and swing her around in a circle. He was so giddy that he just kind of flopped them both down lengthways on the couch, laughing.

“Hardison, what the hell is it now,” Eliot asked, long-suffering.

Hardison pushed up on his hands to see over the back of the couch. “The tablet! It _has_ to be Wakandan tech.” Parker readjusted a little while he was talking to sit up at the end of the cushion, feeling red and rumpled. “They’ve only published a few schematics so far, but I really think it can only work on a vibranium chip, and the _encryption_ …!” he trailed off like a cartoon character sappily falling in love and swooned theatrically to lay his head on Parker’s lap.

Bucky stared at their antics bemusedly. “No shit?”

“What do you mean, ‘No shit’?” Hardison demanded, getting up again to point accusingly at Bucky. “Where did you get that thing? Who gave it to you?”

“Princess Shuri?” Bucky said, smirking.

Hardison’s mouth dropped open, overcome. “The _prin_ \-- She ga-- _Why didn’t you say so?_ ”

“Why didn’t you ask?” Bucky countered.

“You didn’t seem to know anything about how it worked!”

Bucky shook his head. “And I really, really don’t.”

“Man. I thought it was a new generation of Stark tech, I really did,” Hardison said, calming down a little, putting his head back in Parker’s lap. “ _Wakandan_. I might cry.”

“I was going to steal you some for your birthday,” Parker told him. “Now I have to think of something else.” Hardison smiled up at her. 

Bucky muttered that the Dora Milaje would have something to say about that.

“Wait, so is your arm from Wakanda, too?” Parker asked Bucky, who went so still that he might as well have turned to stone.

“Did you look through my things?” he asked, his voice tight and weird.

Not sure why he was suddenly upset, Parker shook her head and pointed at the big screen, which was still running security video of Bucky and the Falcon fighting Spiderman in an airport, his metal arm shining.

Bucky stared at the screen blankly for a while and then mumbled, “The arm’s vibranium, yeah.” He blinked hard and forced his way through an obviously unprepared speech. “Um, I know you guys help people. And I want to help, too. So. You should know. That I have the arm with me. It’s just not attached. But. I could. I mean, I could attach it. If I needed to. To help people.”

The quiet, halting way he spoke made Hardison sit up and exchange Significant Looks with Eliot and Parker. Eliot said, “Okay, we’ll keep it in mind, just in case.”

“I would need about two hours’ heads up,” Bucky adds. “I don’t keep a set of the tools I need for the wiring, but they’re pretty widely available. So. As a last resort.” His eyebrows drew together, like Eliot in his worst moods. “I mean, I _could_.”

Hardison’s head swiveled toward the cleanroom, where he probably had two of every kind of tool Bucky might be thinking of. Then he turned back and made even bigger eyes at Eliot.

“Yeah, man,” Eliot agreed again, clapping a hand to Bucky’s right shoulder, which seemed to jolt him a little. “Like you said, last resort. Don’t worry about it, though. Our jobs hardly ever turn into a fight.”

Parker opened her mouth to contradict him, because wow, Eliot ended up punching someone like once a week. But this time Eliot made those big eyes at _her_ , and she kind of caught on.

“Anyway, [this is what the ‘Dnieper’ looks like](https://www.wikiart.org/en/arkhip-kuindzhi/moonlight-night-on-the-dnieper-1880),” she announced, flicking the image on her phone up to the big screen. It was a dark painting, almost all black apart from silvery moonlight reflecting off the clouds and a ribbon of water.

Bucky barked a sudden laugh. “Holy shit,” he said, “Nat has that hanging above her couch!”

That lightened the mood, and Hardison took the distraction to sheepishly close the door to the cleanroom, keeping those tools out of sight and out of mind. Parker knew from experience that whenever something made her talk the way that Bucky did about reattaching the arm, Hardison would do anything he could to prevent her from needing to think about it again.

She gave Hardison an extra kiss on the cheek when he came back to sit down with her. His ears went a little red as they listened to Eliot recount a story about Romanova that seemed like it had too many bows and arrows in it. Bucky laughed the whole way through, though.

\--

Barnes stuck around a few weeks while there weren’t too many jobs to do besides helping Jenny in the pub’s kitchen. He fit in with the group and suited their sense of humor well, but he had a few no-go topics, like anybody else. It worked out pretty well that he stayed in Eliot’s apartment; they sometimes woke each other up with nightmares, but neither of them was in too much danger of bringing up literal warzones.

Of course, then a job walked into the brewpub on crutches, with a caretaker.

“I’m Corporal … Marcus Albright,” the kid said slowly, his speech slurred and confused in the way that signaled a traumatic brain injury to Eliot’s ears. “Or, I guess, I used to be. I’m out now,” he said, tapping his aluminum prosthetic ankle against the table leg. He was a black kid, couldn’t have been twenty-five years old yet. Eliot had known a lot of good guys like him.

“Okay, Corporal,” Parker greeted him. “What kind of help do you need?”

All six of them - the Leverage team plus Barnes, Corporal Albright and Maria, his helper - were circled around a couple of tables pushed together. They had closed the pub for the afternoon with barely any notice, shifting the wifi-leeches and college kids out to find a coffee place instead. 

Albright said, “I’m in trouble,” and then it seemed like his throat closed up on him. He struggled to say, “I owe - a lot of - of money,” and some tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m gonna _do_.” He leaned into Maria, obviously overcome. Kid could use some post-combat counseling, if you asked Eliot, although considering the state of the VA, who knew when that was going to happen.

Parker nodded as Albright took a moment to collect himself. “We’ve helped people in similar situations before,” she told him, “and we’re going to do our best to help you, too. Who do you owe money to? Do you know their names, or where we can find them?”

“Sure,” Albright said, wiping his face with a napkin. “MotorLoans, on Arapahoe in Centennial.”

Eliot, who had been waiting to hear about some under-the-table loan sharks, was confused. “I’ve driven past there. Next to the cash-for-gold place?”

Albright nodded.

“So you took out a loan with them?” Eliot pushed further.

“Me and a lot of other vets I know,” Albright confirmed.

Hardison, who had his phone out looking stuff up, suddenly searched out Eliot’s eyes. “Hey, buddy, can you see if we have any Kenny Lager left in the back?”

Eliot frowned at him, hearing the code word to dismiss him from the client meeting. 

Hardison raised his eyebrows, emphatic, and suggested, “Maybe Barnes can help you.”

Barnes, who had mostly just been looking uncomfortable and pensive in the corner, now glanced between them.

Eliot accepted the order with ill grace and stood up. “Corporal Albright, Ms. Lopez,” he excused himself with a tight smile and beckoned for Barnes to follow him.

Once they were in the kitchen, Barnes went for the dry storeroom. “I haven’t seen the Kenny Lager,” he commented, “is it new or something?”

“Haven’t brewed it in months,” Eliot said, pacing back and forth to try and get on top of the way he was feeling. Kicked out of the meeting - and he didn’t know _why_ \- well, he kind of knew, but not the specifics.

“Uh,” Barnes paused and snuck a look at him, “okay? So then … what the hell are we doing back here?”

Eliot went for the fridge. “Here, dice these onions,” he instructed, throwing a whole bag of them on the counter. “We have a while before Jenny comes in, and if the prep isn’t done in time for dinner, she’ll blow her lid.” He took out some kale, mint, and arugula for himself, and started tearing things apart.

Barnes left him alone after that. He had a one-handed cutting board, now, that was vice-clamped to the countertop. He could just impale the onions on some spikes to hold them in place and start slicing. It was a little awkward, and he paused frequently to give his knife a few quick slides through the sharpener, but it worked well enough. Eliot couldn’t fault him; he always kept his blades sharp enough to kill, too.

It took at least ten minutes and many shredded leaves before Eliot could calmly explain, “It’s a code we use for when a subject is going to royally piss one of us off.”

Barnes said, “I’m guessing we’re talking about a little more pissed off than Hardison using the last of the milk for his cereal.”

“A lot more.” Eliot frowned at the kale he was disassembling and then shook his head. “A _lot_ more. I’m trying to warn you. That kid out there - that wounded vet - he’s the victim of something screwy. He said that he knows other vets going through the same thing. Hardison got me out of there because he thought it would make me homicidal. Do you get it?”

“Sure, I get it,” Barnes acknowledged, smirking with one side of his mouth, no amusement on his face. Each of his cuts to the onion was perfectly even and parallel, and something about his super metabolism meant that he didn’t even tear up. “But, I mean, haven’t you heard? I’m an _ex -_ assassin. I got out of the homicidal rage business.”

Eliot grunted. “So did I.” Another plant came to pieces in his hands. He got a hold of himself, listening to the delayed chopping noises as Barnes negotiated around the spikes of his cutting board, and asked, “Have you thought about getting a new arm?”

Barnes’ knife thunked into the board hard enough that it stuck there. “Fuck,” Barnes muttered and started wedging it back out. “I told you that’s a _last resort_. The circumstances would have to be dire. And knowing I’m about to hear something that’ll rocket me to the moon doesn’t exactly make me want to be _more_ of a deadly weapon.”

Eliot heard the tell in his voice, the lower ring of honesty that might turn a person inside-out. Barnes dropped that like it was self-evident: _‘deadly weapon’_. Eliot could ask him about that, probably; hell, a few years ago, he had a few things to say about it, himself. Instead, he gave Barnes time to pull his knife free and pointed out blandly, “I meant a normal one. Civilian grade.”

Barnes frowned down at his one-handed cutting board and sliced the onion around its equator. “I’m doing alright,” he said, finally.

Sometimes ‘doing alright’ was all you could ask for, Eliot knew.

\--

“So anyway, predatory money lenders are targeting disabled veterans for incredibly steep loans that they have no way of paying back,” Hardison blurted out pretty much the minute that he got the team (plus Bucky) upstairs to his and Parker’s apartment. Then he held his breath and waited to see how pissed off Eliot would be.

Eliot had his arms crossed on the kitchen island, looking grim but not as apoplectic as Hardison expected. “Okay, that’s a tough situation,” Eliot grunted, “but it’s fixed in one call to the cops.”

Aw, crap. Hardison saw the problem now.

Eyes narrowing at Hardison’s expression, Eliot continued, “Because the cops would shut that down right away.”

Hardison winced.

“Because it’s illegal.” Now Eliot was getting that murderous glint in his eye, daring Hardison to contradict him. 

“Help me out,” Hardison asked Parker.

Parker had her forehead pressed up to the window, her arms crossed in a pose she probably copied directly from Eliot. “I don’t want to explain it,” she pouted. “Explaining always makes someone sound like they think it’s reasonable.”

“But _Parker,_ ” Hardison tried again, “you’re the _boss_.”

“That’s why I get to delegate things that are super gross and upsetting,” she said stiffly. She did turn to give him a look over her shoulder told him she really couldn’t handle it, so Hardison waved his arms instead of arguing back.

Bucky, sitting with his booted feet up on their couch like a wild animal, reached for his Wakandan tablet from the coffee table and announced, “Oh look. I bet I can just ask google to explain why you’re making it sound like this extremely exploitative thing is legal. Besides just the normal ‘the future is grim and capitalism hasn’t improved since Black Tuesday’ stuff.”

Hardison sighed and threw some info up on the main screen. “Fine. It’s not quite illegal, no. Basically, most of the vets that Corporal Albright can connect to this place are injured enough that they can’t live on their own. A lot of cognitive injuries. They struggle with day-to-day independence and probably won’t have a normal job again.”

“We get the concept,” Eliot acknowledged curtly. His hands were curled into fists. When Eliot caught Hardison’s assessing glance, he straightened up, uncrossed his arms, and turned on the oven. 

“Well, so, the problem is that these folks are vulnerable to--” 

The wooden cutting board clattered as it hit the counter, so Hardison raised his voice to be heard over Eliot’s coping mechanisms. 

“--To high-pressure sales tactics, and their signature is still legally binding if they get talked into a loan with a high interest rate. Like a pay-day loan, where someone can get a cash advance and theoretically pay it back when they get their next paycheck.”

“You said the vets don’t have jobs,” Bucky said. Hardison was less tuned in to the guy’s moods, but it was never a good sign when the sarcasm dropped away. 

Hardison sighed. “Well. They do have a small but reliable stipend coming in from the government every month. If they have something come up that the VA doesn’t cover, they get into a tight spot and need cash, and, well, MotorLoans has already been calling and offering them cash with no questions asked.”

“Besides ‘can you sign here, please’,” Parker tacks on.

The room was quiet apart from Eliot opening and closing the refrigerator door as he got out more ingredients.

Hardison concludes, “And, of course, it’s not illegal because the entire predatory lending industry is incredibly lucrative. There are state congresspeople directly profiting from it, in, uh, kind of most of the states. John Oliver did a whole show about it.”

Bucky gave him a familiar blank look.

“Hang on, man, I’ll text you a link,” Hardison said.

“Thanks. I guess.” Bucky put his boots on the floor and sat up slowly like he was ninety years old. “I don’t suppose it would be helpful to punch someone?” he offered, bitter.

Now, finally, Parker turned around and came to stand by Hardison, her shoulder against his arm. “The game plan is to generate some good old-fashioned public outrage. We call up a reporter, maybe do some of the investigative legwork, and put the practice of targeting disabled vets under an uncomfortable amount of scrutiny.”

Eliot paused in chopping up what Hardison would guess was some type of squash and prompted, “What about short-term help for the victims?”

“Hardison already set up a fund to connect them with lawyers and start digging out of the interest debt.” Two of Parker’s fingers touched the small of Hardison’s back, a little press that rocked him on his toes, reminded him not to lock his knees. He smiled at her, and she scrunched up her nose, a hint of the familiar rhythm slotting into place.

“Hey, guys?” Bucky asked suspiciously, “Where do all your endless stacks of money come from?” 

Hardison waggled his hand noncommittally. “Calling it _ours_ might be an overstatement. It’s better to think of it as a redistribution of wealth.” 

Bucky rolled his eyes and grumbled that everyone he knew was mysteriously and fabulously wealthy, which Hardison thought was a bit rich, considering how much Bucky had and was currently benefiting from it.

“So that’s the plan,” Parker reviewed. “We look up and interview some of the other victims that Corporal Albright named, we keep anyone else from signing more contracts, and we get a reporter. Easy peasy.”

“Maybe punch some people on the side. Like, recreationally,” Bucky joked.

Eliot pointed the tip of his knife at Bucky. “That’s my job. You’re my sous chef. The least you could do is come and grate some cheese, Barnes.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and stood up, and Hardison told him, “And take your damn boots off. This is a socks household.”

\---

This job was turning out to be tough.

The vibe that Parker got when Eliot and Bucky came home from canvassing the veterans’ support group was that they definitely identified some other victims. The way Eliot started about three different projects in the next hour also clued her in that he wasn’t satisfied with the first stage of the plan. Giving the vets a number for a lawyer prepared to help them for no charge didn’t instantly fix any of their real and crushing problems.

She also figured that Bucky was upset. He poked around on his tablet, mostly, and only perked up when Eliot changed from one home improvement task to the next, checking in to see what he could do to help. While Eliot aggressively installed a bidet that Hardison had mentioned half-jokingly months before, Parker passed behind the couch and saw that Bucky was playing John Oliver segments on Youtube. 

That wouldn’t give anyone a boost of optimism. Parker didn’t find current events funny, the way that Hardison could sometimes laugh about this stuff. Judging by the grim set of Bucky’s eyebrows, he couldn’t laugh about them, either. 

“Hey,” Parker said to Bucky, after Eliot switched to sanding down the uneven table leg and she found herself pacing the apartment again, “do you want to wrestle?”

He took his earbuds out and looked at her weird. “Like. High school, singlets, a lot of grunting?”

She looked at him weird, too. “Like play fighting, but it isn’t dignified to call it that.”

“Sparring?” he hazarded. “I’ve gone a few rounds with Steve before.”

“I’m not really a punchy person,” she told him.

Bucky looked more confused. “Then what are you?”  
  
She grinned and told him, “Flexible.”

Now his eyes got wide and he looked to Eliot in the kitchen area. “Spencer. Help.”

“I know,” Eliot grunted, straightening up from his crouch over the table with its legs in the air. “Listen. I know. She’s talking about getting you in an arm-bar once or twice. It’ll be like fighting Romanova, but with no knives.”

“Uh.” Bucky looked from Eliot to Parker to the door of the cleanroom where Hardison was monitoring the MotorLoans storefront. “Okay. I can do that,” Bucky agreed.

Parker clapped her hands and jumped over to Eliot, hand outstretched.

“Back pocket,” he said with a screwdriver in his mouth.

She fished his keyring out of the back pocket of his jeans and checked on Bucky. He was still on the couch. Parker jerked her head at the front door and said, “Come on! Eliot has a whole room set up.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Eliot. “You have a _whole room_ dedicated to a sparring area, but I’ve been sleeping on the couch for five weeks?”

“Be grateful it’s a pull-out,” Eliot warned him.

Bucky followed Parker two steps across the hallway into Eliot’s apartment, then into the second bedroom that was kept locked. It was more accurate to call it a work-out room, with weights and a yoga mat against the near wall. Eliot also had a couple of mats on the floor for martial arts, and he had shown Parker a few cool moves in here.

“Okay! So the rules are, _no_ breaking any bones or important ligaments,” she instructed Bucky, pulling her socks off.

Bucky squinted and mouthed the word ‘important’ back at her.

Parker quirked one eyebrow at him. “And try not to leave bruises in obvious places.”

He was obviously waiting for more rules, and after a second, he said, “Is that it?”

“I don’t know. I figure you know the important ones about not fighting dirty and us still being friends after,” she told him. “C’mon, are you ready?”

He checked the pockets of his summer shorts and ran a hand over the bun his hair was in, then shrugged.

So Parker sprang toward him.

Thirty seconds later, she had him on his back with her knees on his shoulders, arms trying to grapple with his legs as he kicked himself free.

“Wait! Wait!” he called, and Parker rolled off him, springing back to her feet in one motion.

“Are you okay?” she asked, surprised.

He stared up at her with the giant tragic-history eyes she recognized from Eliot. “Are _you_ okay? Did that hurt your knee?”

“What?” she asked. “Do you mean the metal?”

He sat up on the mat and unbuttoned his ever-present flannel shirt. When it fell open, the empty sleeve dropped away from a circle of shining metal set into the socket of his shoulder. It was surrounded by scar tissue and looked a lot like a piece of metal that wasn’t really designed to be stuck inside someone’s body.

“Oooh, yikes,” Parker hisses. “Sorry, did I put too much weight on it?” She had felt the hard surface under her left kneecap, but it hadn’t worried her. She could see how it would have hurt to have a layer of skin pinched up against it, though.

Bucky fell back down to lie on the mat, his hand coming up to his forehead. “ _I’m_ fine,” he told Parker, exasperated.

“Okay?” she agreed. “Do I need to be more careful?”

He turned the tragic eyes on her again. “Do _I_ need to be more careful?”

Parker threw her hands up the way Hardison always did. “ _You_ told me to stop. What reaction are you waiting for? It works better if you tell me.”

“I guess,” Buck started, and stopped, and covered his eyes with his hand. “I guess I’m waiting for you to be disgusted.”

“Oh. No, that doesn’t sound like fun.” Parker set her feet to take his weight and offered him a hand up. “Do you still want to wrestle, or not?”

Bucky took her hand, but mostly carried his own weight to stand up. 

He was less careful with her after that. He was _really_ strong, but she was also really bendy, so mostly they tired each other out. Parker spent the rest of the afternoon reading and letting Eliot make her a complicated version of lasagna.

Late that night, Eliot was still roaming around with unsettled energy, so Parker and Hardison pinned him to the couch and started a movie marathon. Bucky came in from Eliot’s apartment a few hours in, eyes bleary from interrupted sleep. Instead of commenting on the way that Hardison was practically on top of Eliot to get him to sit still, Bucky just sat on the end of the couch that they weren’t using and watched some bad hacker movies from the nineties well into the early morning.

So the job was tough, but they were getting through it.

\--

Stage Two of the plan was to stake out the MotorLoans strip mall and flag down or give out information to anyone trying to use their services. It was really just killing time for the two days until the reporter could make it out and get the ball rolling on Stage Three. So, Eliot brought his zipped-up case of CDs and set up the stake-out van stereo to provide Barnes with some education.

Barnes seemed to be warming up to his tastes - possibly - when all emotion was wiped away from his face in a second. He tensed up and braced his hand against the dashboard, every muscle suddenly taut.

Eliot turned the music off and scanned their surroundings. “What are you seeing?”

“I need two hours and an electronics store,” Bucky mumbled in a monotone, face still blank.

“What for?” Eliot asked, his adrenaline catching up to the situation. 

He pulled out the binoculars and looked at the parking lot again. No new MotorLoans customers had arrived in the last half hour. The cash-for-gold pawn shop was doing reasonable business for two in the afternoon. Most of the parked cars were attributable to the stop-and-shop convenience store or the employees of the small line of stores.

However, the MotorLoans office had a couple of white-collar guys in suits that had just emerged from the back office. They must have come through the employee entrance out back, because Eliot hadn’t seen them go in. When he lowered the binoculars, they were too far away to make out distinct features; Barnes didn’t seem to have trouble identifying them, though.

“Who are they?” he asked Barnes, who was breathing too quickly.

“Just start driving!” Barnes snapped at him, raising his voice for the first time that Eliot had known him.

Their earpiece radios crackled to life. “What’s going on?” Parker’s startled voice came over the line.

“ _I need my arm_ ,” Bucky shouted, ringing in the close space. The unsettling stillness of his initial reaction now disappeared in a burst of motion. He leaned over Eliot and turned the keys so far that the van’s engine turned over and the ignition scraped. 

Eliot decided that dealing with Barnes was more important than hanging around the MotorLoans office and pulled out of their parking spot. 

Satisfied that they were now moving, Barnes climbed into the back of the van. He knocked into Eliot’s seat and then the van’s side door, uncareful of his bulk or his strength, and started pulling the arm’s case out of the storage locker where Eliot kept his guns under lock and key.

Eliot got on the road, glancing in the rear-view mirror to check that Barnes wasn’t breaking any of the equipment they kept back there.

“Update?” Parker prompted again. “Eliot? Someone?”

“We have encountered an issue,” Eliot told her, because he didn’t have much more information than that. “Barnes twigged to something. Can you figure out who the guys were in the office right before we left?”

Hardison responded, “On it.”

Eliot called over his shoulder, “Barnes? Can you give me a hint about where we’re going?”

“I need the tools to reconnect the arm. Any electronic parts retailer will do. There’s a store 1.4 miles south if you turn left here,” Barnes recited like he’d memorized every location in the Portland area. 

When Eliot checked again, Barnes had the case open on the floor of the van and was unscrewing the flat cap of metal covering his shoulder socket. 

Instead of commenting, Eliot turned on his signal and got into the left turning lane.

After a long thirty seconds, Hardison hesitantly said, “Bucky. There is a set of tools under the passenger’s seat.”

Barnes straightened up on his knees. “Does it have a spudger and ESD tweezers?”

“Yep,” Hardison confirmed, “but Bucky--”

Barnes was already going for the toolkit. Eliot took this as a cue to just pull over into the first convenient parking lot.

“Why do you need the arm?” Hardison continued to speak as Eliot parked. “We don’t need superpowers to have KGW8 send a camera crew out. It’s a last resort, right?”

Barnes informed them, “Threat level has been reassessed,” his voice back to being completely devoid of inflection.

Eliot turned around in the driver’s seat. “Based on what?”

He could see an anti-static wristband on Barnes' wrist and hear the clicking and scraping of small tools, but Barnes had the left shoulder turned away from him. 

When Barnes ignored him, Eliot said, “You need to keep your team informed when the mission parameters change, Barnes.”

“You’re no longer part of the mission.” Barnes looked up long enough to meet Eliot’s eyes. “You need to be somewhere safe. Preferably across state lines.”

Eliot stared at him. The guy was truly shaken, and completely, sincerely thought they were all in imminent danger. Considering what few specifics Eliot knew about Barnes’ past, this was serious. “What the hell _is_ it?” he urged. “Let us help you out.”

Barnes just lay the metal arm across his lap and began prying a circle of small latches open around the perimeter where the arm would meet his socket.

“I got it,” Hardison said gravely. “The dudes in the office are the regional CEO and CFO of MotorLoans. Both are named as previously affiliated in Romanova’s HYDRA data dump from the 2014 Triskelion thing.”

Eliot was watching for the flinch when Barnes heard the organization’s name.

“There’s no such thing as _former_ HYDRA,” Barnes hissed. He set down his prying tool and picked up the tweezers to start separating out several fine, fibrous wires from the center of the arm’s connection.

On the comms, Parker ventured, “I mean, okay, but we already knew that they’re the bad guys.”

Still observing Barnes’ quick manipulation of the machinery, Eliot said, “The stories about SHIELD having advanced technology and energy weapons wasn’t just propaganda, huh?” The word he would apply to Barnes’ familiarity with the arm was _‘practiced’_. The guy grew up before television was invented and didn’t understand wifi, but he knew his way around the arm’s wiring like - to make a bad pun - like the back of his hand. Barnes had reattached or repaired the arm many times before.

“All HYDRA operatives must be assumed to be armed and extremely dangerous,” Barnes insisted. “And if they connect me to you, you’re all as good as dead.” 

He pressed one more thing in the nest of wires inside the arm and a faint static hum filled the air, like the thing was coming online. It felt like a third presence in the van. A viper ready to strike. No, Eliot reflected; more like a gun with the safety unlatched.

“Spencer,” Barnes said, pausing with the arm angled up to meet his shoulder, and that was all. 

Eliot understood what he was asking for. Eliot needed to be the one to light a fire under Hardison and Parker and scramble them out of Oregon. The Washington state line was only half an hour away, but it would be a good start. This HYDRA stuff was out of their league, and honestly, Barnes probably didn’t expect to handle it alone. Eliot should herd his team up like a pair of cats while Barnes called in the superhero cavalry. The Avengers were the right people for this situation, and turning suspected terrorists over to the proper authorities was generally the safest route.

The thing was… they weren’t big fans of either the authorities or safety. They were more about getting the best results, and that meant keeping the arm unattached.

“No more stake-outs,” Eliot negotiated. “Hardison starts covering our tracks right away. We keep an EMP on us to disable their technology if they get too close. We get the HYDRA guys in police handcuffs on any flimsy or fabricated excuse. That way, if they want to retaliate, they at least need to break out of custody first. We’ll have some warning that way.”

“That’s not good enough!” Barnes let go of the arm and waved his flesh hand in the air like he was appealing to a higher power to look at the shit he was dealing with.

Eliot had to rub his hand across his face to hide a smile, because that was a move lifted from Hardison at his most exasperated. He schooled his face when he realized what it would take to convince Barnes. 

He softly admitted, “I’ve worked for HYDRA before.”

Barnes reared his head back and blinked hard like he had taken a punch. He scooted away from Eliot, reflexively opening up the distance between them.

“I didn’t know it was them,” Eliot went on, very conscious of Hardison and Parker listening in on this. “But it was bad stuff. Destabilization. The stuff that gets brought up in war crimes tribunals. Chaos, like they talk about.”

The reaction Barnes had to _that_ was even more telling. He froze up under the accusation and his eyes went for the exits. Eliot nearly heard Barnes’ assessment that going out the back would be the fastest and avoided getting within arm’s reach of Eliot.

“That’s how I really met Romanova. She told me to knock it off,” he remembered, and chuckled at the irony. “She didn’t know at the time that she was working for them, too. But listen. I’ve dealt with them before. I get it. We can handle this.”

“They’ll go scorched earth,” Barnes warned him unsteadily.

“We’ll be very careful, but we’ve done this before. Barnes,” Eliot emphasized, “ _you don’t need the arm to finish this job._ ”

Barnes looked at the arm for what felt like a long time, but the van’s clock thought was under a minute.

Then he used the tweezers to carefully press whatever power switch the arm had, taking the electric whine out of Eliot’s ears, and folded the wires back into place like flower petals closing after sunset.

“Uh,” Hardison started after they were quiet for too long, “hey, the stoic and silent thing is great, but we can’t actually see you guys. Are we good?”

Eliot waited Barnes out as he shut the arm back in the case, locked it, and stowed it in the weapons locker.

“Seriously,” Parker said after another minute ticked by.

Barnes picked up the metal disc that capped off the exposed workings of his empty socket, and told them, “Yeah. I think we’re good.”

Then he smiled like he’d just remembered how.

\--

When Bucky decided to move on from Leverage jobs, he took all three of them out to Washington D.C. to hang out with his own set of friends. 

“Sorry that we had to meet so surreptitiously, it’s just the, y’know, international fugitive thing,” Captain 'please just call me Steve' America apologized to them over coffee. The cafe was in an area where Hardison had made sure that all the surveillance and traffic cameras were mysteriously offline. 

“That’s okay, Captain America,” Hardison reassured him.

Sam 'don’t I get a nickname too?' Wilson rolled his eyes at Hardison and told Eliot and Parker, “Come collect your boy before he asks for an autograph.”

Parker brushed this off. “That’s Eliot’s job right now. I’m gonna be the same way when I break into Romanova’s place.”

Captain America scolded, “It’s a very bad idea to break into Nat’s apartment.”

“But I want to see her original 'Dnieper',” Parker whined.

“So just ask her,” Captain America said, mimicking her tone.

Parker crossed her arms and huffed, “That’s no fun.”

Wilson advised, “Yeah, but at least you won’t get shot at.”

“I’m sure she’ll still be very impressed with you,” Eliot said loyally when Parker tried to do the big eyes so he would agree to help her scale a building, “when you use the front door.”

“Nah, let’s do it,” Bucky decided, “I’ll spot you.”

 _Oh my god_ , Hardison thought when Bucky and Parker both got a disapproving look, _my girlfriend is disappointing_ **_Captain America_**.

However, to Hardison’s deep disappointment, the trip did not include a visit to the newly-established Wakandan embassy. 

“I can’t get you a meeting with Princess Shuri,” Bucky told him. “She gave me _one_ tablet. I don’t have that kind of pull. I don’t even know whether she’s in the States or back home right now.” 

“Then why are we even friends, dude?”

Bucky smirked and held up a card. “Because I _can_ give you her email address.”

So basically, all of Hardison’s heartache and worrying about this one-armed superpowered hipster teddy bear paid off in the end.


End file.
